Hi Bob-- Thanks for the comments. I think you may be looking at the
previous rev, though... They don't quite correspond to the current version
(accessible at http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/).
At 12:44 PM 2/25/00 -0500, DuCharme, Robert wrote:
>It looks great. I saw a few terminology points that should be clarified
>before the spec is frozen:
Thanks!
>1. From section 1. Introduction "Other kinds of links may exist and even be
>encoded in XML, but the term as used here refers only to an XLink link."
> From 1.1: "...automated translation of HTML links to XML links must be
>possible." Because the first passage allows for the possibility of non-XLink
>XML links, the second should read "automated translation of HTML links to
>XLink links." (Or it should read "to XLinks"--the first paragraph of 3.1 is
>the only place I saw where the noun "XLink" is used to refer to an
>XLink-compliant link; if it is a proper term to use, it should have its own
>entry in section 1.3. The definition may seem obvious, but the XLink spec
>should clearly define the possible usage of the term "XLink.")
We decided not to quote from the requirements document anymore, because it
was getting too confusing and people could just go look for themselves. So
now the troublesome text from the requirements document (which predates the
spec, which is more terminologically precise) is gone.
I believe we've also now removed all uses of XLink as a noun.
>2. section 2: "Document creators can use the XLink global attributes to make
>the elements in their own namespace." What does this mean by "make"? Isn't
>there a more appropriate verb to use here?
The text currently reads: "Document creators can use the XLink global
attributes to make the elements in their own namespace, or even in a
namespace they don't control, recognizable as XLink elements."
So it's "make recognizable." Perhaps the heavy noun phrase at the end
could be moved up: "Document creators can use the XLink global attributes
to make recognizable as XLink elements the elements in their own namespace,
or even in a namespace they don't control." What do you think?
>3: 3.1 Most of the spec refers to simple links as being different from
>extended links, but given the way extended links are defined, simple links
>seem to qualify as extended links. ("arbitrary number of resources"--like 2?
>"may be any combination of remote and local") I may be missing something,
>but if not, the relationship of simple and extended links elsewhere in the
>spec (like 3.2 "The purpose of a simple link is to be a convenient shorthand
>for the equivalent extended link...a simple link could be represented by an
>extended link...") should be more carefully worded to show that simple links
>are not different from extended links but a subset of them. The definition
>of extended links should explicitly say either that all links are extended
>and that simple links are a subset of this group or else identify why they
>are separate. The XML spec explicitly says that valid documents must be
>well-formed, and look how many people have gone around saying that documents
>were valid *or* well-formed. I see a chance to head off some greater
>confusion here.
Hopefully the latest text solves this problem; see
http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/#linking-elements and
http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/#simple-links.
Eve
--
Eve Maler Sun Microsystems
elm @ east.sun.com +1 781 442 3190